The Constitutive Practices of Public Smartphone Use

Ida Marie Henriksen, Marianne Skaar and Aksel Tjora
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Ida Marie Henriksen: Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7491 Trondheim, Norway
Marianne Skaar: Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7491 Trondheim, Norway
Aksel Tjora: Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7491 Trondheim, Norway

Societies, 2020, vol. 10, issue 4, 1-13

Abstract: The smartphone has become the most ubiquitous piece of personal technology, giving it significant social importance and sociological relevance. In this article, we explore how the smartphone interacts with and impacts social interaction in the setting of the urban café. Through analyzing 52 spontaneous in-depth interviews related to social interaction in cafés, we identify three categories of smartphone use in social settings: interaction suspension , deliberately shielding interaction, and accessing shareables . These categories comprise the constitutive smartphone practices that define the social order of public smartphone use within an interactionist sociological framework.

Keywords: ethnomethodology; interaction suspension; smartphone; social interaction; Goffman (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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